Reflections on a Blood Sausage

Continued (page 5 of 6)

This was my third meal in San Sebastián.
While I was eating the duck, I realized that
with few exceptions, almost every dish I’d
tried worked best with a crisp, flavorful
white wine. Unfortunately, Spain makes
few of these. The Basque Country is adjacent
to La Rioja, home of complex, delicious,
aromatic, wood-aged red wines, but
Riojas do not match up well with the
sweet, complex flavors of nueva cocina vasca.

*****

The last of the four restaurants on my
itinerary, Zuberoa, is located a few miles
outside San Sebastián in the tiny town of
Oiartzun. By the time I set out for dinner, I
believed I had become an authority not just
on the local food but also on the surrounding
countryside. After all, I had found my
way to the hilltop aerie of Akela’re and to
the nearly unmarked Martín Berasategui. I
drove off with confidence.

Nearly an hour later, desperate, I pulled
off the road, accosted an elderly couple
outside their home and implored them for
help. The lady got into her Citroën, signaled
me to follow and took off on a wild
ride past three subdivisions, two traffic
circles and one construction site, finally
screeching to a halt in front of a tiny
mecca of bird-chirping, small-town serenity.
I invited her to have dinner with me,
but she declined, obviously and understandably
preferring her husband to an
addled American.

Zuberoa reminded me of an ancient
Basque farmhouse, which it might well
have been. The ceilings were beamed and
the floor was polished stone, although
dark blue walls, blue draperies and track
lighting diminished the agrarian effect. A
corps of waitresses stood at near attention
throughout dinner, poised to swoop with
Air Rescue efficiency whenever a customer
seemed in need. Ten seconds after my napkin
slipped from my knee, a waitress was
there with a fresh one held between two
silver spoons.

My tasting menu started off with a pancake
of pillowy softness stuffed with
smoked-salmon mousse and (according to
the menu) “aromatised” with anchovy
essence, a kind of eau de fish. Fortunately, the
odor was too faint to detect. My second
course seemed wonderfully French, a cup
containing a thin layer of foie gras cream
topped with a layer of truffled jelly topped
with a pea-flavored mousse containing
shavings of ham cracklings. Next came a
perfect scallop covered with chopped black
truffles (duplicating the presentation at
Martín Berasategui) and paired with vanilla-scented
ravioli. I don’t mean to pick on
chef-owner Hilario Arbelaitz, for he is no
guiltier than a multitude of other San Sebastián
chefs in overestimating the versatility
of vanilla; the mismatching of vanilla
with earthy ingredients brought back unhappy
memories of the excesses of French
nouvelle cuisine. The fourth course was a
soup consisting of two oysters in a light
fennel-cream broth garnished with bits of
chive and beet as well as a few salmon eggs.
With it came another peculiar sweet, dried
fruit wrapped in a lettuce leaf. Dried, salted
cod, one of the culinary backbones of the
region since the days when Basque fishing
fleets sailed to the North Atlantic, was the
fifth course, but I found the reconstituted
fish too translucent and too salty. The chefs
in San Sebastián doggedly insist on using
their famous bacalao in many dishes in
which fresh cod would be clearly superior.
I had spotted an interesting red wine on
Zuberoa’s list, a 1968 Bodegas Riojanas Viña
Albina Reserve for about $30, so I asked if I
could have meat instead of the red mullet
on the tasting menu. By now I was so accustomed
to the amenability of the restaurants,
I knew I wouldn’t be refused. I asked
for Zuberoa’s famous calf’s snout but was
presented with a calf’s jaw instead. I’m certain
it was an honest mistake, the sort of accident
that can happen whenever a cook is
rummaging around in the meat locker
searching for obscure body parts.

The jaw, which came in a sweet, pale
sauce, had the sort of gelatinous chewiness I
associate with calf’s foot. (Memo to Centers
for Disease Control: Note brilliant insight
leading to certain breakthrough in hoof-and-
mouth-disease research.) My waitress,
noticing my unhappiness, rushed off to get
the snout, which was more in the familiar
braised-beef category. (Memo to celebrity
chefs: Note possibility of replacing pricey
short ribs with economical facial cuts.) The
snout was lean, soft and savory and came
with more of those silly mashed potatoes
reduced to near liquid form. I decided that
the wine—fragile, pale, with the scent of
crumbled bricks and the body of a dying
old Burgundy—was more a jaw wine than a
snout wine.

The last of the main courses was saddle
of rabbit, which I’d never encountered before;
it consisted of a long, unattractive bone
with a nugget of meat at one end. The standard
two-dessert package followed. The
first was based on another Basque classic,
curdled ewe’s milk, but here it had been
smoked. I recommend it to people who like
barbecue for dessert. The second tasted like
a Spanish version of Key lime pie and was a
major improvement over most of the ones
I’ve eaten in Florida.

Afterward, in excellent English, my
heretofore mute waitress offered me a complimentary
glass of the local digestif. I was
unmoved by the apple brandy but astounded
by her suppressed language skills. “Two
years in England,” she said. I wonder if the
chefs of San Sebastián realize that standards
can be maintained even if women are permitted
to speak.

*****

What I realized after eating at the four
signature restaurants of San Sebastián was
how comfortably I had settled into every
one. Despite my aversion to the omnipresent
anchovy, which tastes like something
a shark would spit out, and my
sadness at the mistreatment of the noble tuber,
I felt perfectly at home everywhere I
ate. In part, I credit the cordiality and generosity
of these four restaurants, but mostly
it was their familiar sensibilities.